"The information we know now sheds a whole different light on the inconsistencies we saw during the course of the investigation," said Department of Children and Families regional managing director Mike Carroll.

A week after three-year-old McMullen died, the agencies charged with keeping him safe admit they made mistakes.

"There were some things that we found here where there were opportunities we could have done better work," said Carroll.

The Department of Children and Families (DCF) placed McMullen and his siblings in their grandmother Gale Watkkins' care; due to domestic violence between their parents.

A state review following Michael's death found social workers knew Donella Elaine Trainor was in the house and around the kids. But they never conducted a required background check.

The background check would have revealed Trainor was convicted of child abuse in the 90s.

"The degree to which this family went out of their way to manipulate and withhold information made it really difficult to get down to the bottom of what was going on," said Children's Network of Southwest Florida's CEO Naderah Salim.

Investigators also missed signs that the kids' parents, who lost custody, continued to live in the home.

The review found more should have been done to assess Watkins' ability to care for the kids - who didn't even have beds.

The children never got recommended counseling and were often absent from daycare.

"Looking back in hindsight, knowing what we know now, there are certainly lesson that we could've learned," said Lutheran Services Florida's CEO Sam Sipes.

Lutheran Services handled the case.

After McMullen's death, the organization fired case manager Racquel Pinnock and case supervisor Karleen Halfmann - who were assigned to his case.

It is now reviewing 300 other cases to make sure background checks were not missed.

"Clearly, there was an issue regarding background checks," said Sipes.

DCF is reviewing the actions of its investigators. It's also in the process of implementing department wide changes that would better train workers to understand what's happening behind closed doors.

"Everybody needs to work together. Everybody has to have the same information and we need to react to that information and connect the dots better," said Carroll.

The review also found that DCF did not fully investigate a report from July that McMullen was forced to sleep in a cage inside the home.

Two other DCF investigations into allegations of abuse against the children in 2012 were closed. The reports were deemed not substantiated.

Now that we're getting into the second half of August, it's the the time of year when we really start to monitor the far eastern Atlantic for budding tropical waves that could potentially develop into tropical storms or hurricanes.